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About The Second Lie

A woman desperate to achieve her dreams.

To reassure wealthy clients, Christina Alvarez Mancini invented a jet-setting British owner for her Napa Valley wine collection service. Success has brought her close to buying her own winery, when irregularities at a London wine auction threaten her business.

A man in love with a good plan.

Stig, an immortal Viking thief, knows he’s found the perfect role. The California woman who created his character won’t discover what he’s up to in England until after he’s pocketed the money he needs. Then Christina walks into the auction preview, ready to ruin his plans, and he knows his boredom has ended.

Secrets that turn deadly.

By the end of the night, these two rivals must cooperate to escape kidnappers, British authorities, media and a pair of mysterious watchers. That’s when a game Stig’s played for a thousand years puts Christina’s life at risk.

Can two people whose identities are based on lies trust each other enough to survive?

Excerpt

After a long night evading kidnappers and the authorities, Stig and Christina are finally, if temporarily, safe in his secret room in a tunnel under London. Time to clean up.

He reached for the zip at his throat. His shredded dress shirt was in the emergency room, so the steady sixty-three degrees underground was bracing as he pulled his arms out of the overall sleeves.

“What are you doing?”

He glanced at her. “Changing.”

“Oh.” She was looking below his neck, not at his face, and while she wasn’t edging closer, she also wasn’t backing away. No man with an ounce of self-awareness could have resisted inflating his chest and checking his posture under her gaze.

Her eyes widened as she took a matching breath, but her outer layer was too baggy for return admiration. He slipped out of his shoes and dawdled shoving the overalls past his hips. Her gaze followed his hands, lingering at his stomach. He knew when she looked at the trail of hair leading lower from his navel, because her eyes were almost as hot as he imagined her touch would be. The need to rush disappeared, replaced by a hunger to see what she would do next. He rested his hands on the waist of his dirty trousers, and his thumb slipped behind the button to rest against his skin. Yes, she saw that too, and her hand clenched. “Fair notice. I’m going to remove these next.”

She remained silent, but a slight head movement seemed to be a nod, so he proceeded. Slowly.

He popped the button and unzipped without taking his eyes off her. She still didn’t move, as frozen as a marble statue, the flickering candlelight making her appear almost as translucent around the edges as the best of Bernini’s nymphs.

Bending to strip off the trousers would break the spell that bound them. He waited for a moment, savoring the silent connection, but a man couldn’t stand there with his fly drooping open if the woman wasn’t going to leap into action. Showing one’s boxers became rather embarrassing after a few minutes.

He glanced down. A chap had to keep a few secrets.

“Oh! I’m sorry.” She turned abruptly to the farthest locker and struggled with the catch. “What’s in here? May I open it?” Her words were rushed, satisfying him that he’d rattled her.

“It’s either that or turn around to see what you see. Which is scarier?” All she’d see was him stepping into a pressed pair of trousers.

About the Author

Anna lives with her quietly funny Canadian husband and two less quiet children in a century-old house in Seattle. The perpetual drizzle is a good excuse to drink more coffee. She’s a former US Army officer who now writes The Immortal Vikings series from Carina Press and also the author of His Road Home, a novella which Publishers Weekly called “Tantalizing … a raw, emotional story” and the website SmartB*tchesTrashyBooks gave an A rating.

She donates a portion of her book proceeds to two charities: the Fisher House Foundation, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers in the US and Great Britain, and Doctors Without Borders, which delivers emergency medical care in more than sixty crisis zones world-wide.